


The Not So Hidden Dragon

by Lori



Series: Not so Special [6]
Category: Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1, The Sentinel
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Sentinels and Guides Are Known, Gen, SGA Saturday Prompt Challenge, Sentinel Senses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-28
Updated: 2012-01-28
Packaged: 2017-10-30 05:52:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/328473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lori/pseuds/Lori
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John is cranky again, this time Jack is cranky along with him.  Rodney mostly shuts up and tries not to get in the way of the alpha male posturing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Not So Hidden Dragon

John could hear the click of the recorder going on and the hum of the autofocus on the camera as he leaned back in his chair.

"What's the last thing you remember before you were captured?"

He shook his head. "Have you ever actually done a debrief before, or are you just after answers that fit the profile of the conclusion you've already drawn?"

The man in the suit on the other side of the table flinched and shuffled his papers. "Answer the question please, Colonel Sheppard."

"No. I'll debrief to someone from the SGC and with my guide present." He watched and listened carefully as his would-be interrogator looked down at his papers again. "I don't know you."

"That's why I am here. An unbiased outside agency."

"Then you'll tell me your name and agency." He really wasn't going to give this man anything they didn't have already. Sure, the three whomevers on the other side of the glass were getting all sorts of information from this 'interrogation,' but hopefully not everything they wanted. Besides, when had he made anything easy for anyone?

"You aren't cleared for that information." The answer came quick and easy.

John debated walking out then settled against it. "You aren't cleared to speak to me officially, are you?"

The man's chin came up slightly. "We need to find out what happened to you."

"So you can stop it from happening again," he said slowly, judging the responses of everyone he could hear.

"Of course." Lie. "We respect our men in uniform." Lie. "It was unacceptable, what happened to you." Truth.

He just sat there and stared into the muddy brown eyes of the man. So they didn't like something about how his 'experimental' time had gone. 

"Colonel Sheppard?"

He just kept staring, letting all the observers stew as he turned the facts over and over in his hands like imperfect jewels.

"If you'll answer a few questions we'll let you go back to your room and rest."

That did it. Before he was completely aware of what was happening he had flipped the table over between them. "No. Last time someone said those words to me--" He stopped himself by clenching his jaw.

"I see." His interrogator hadn't flinched that time, just leaning back out of the way. He knew way more than he was letting on and was lying about everything, including falsifying his body responses, at least some of them.

John just backed away, found a corner and settled into it, closing his eyes. "We're done. Get out."

"We've gotten what we need. In fact, it's out of the building already and will be used on the next sentinel we find. Thank you for your time, Sentinel Sheppard." 

John wasn't particularly surprised when the bright flash of the transporter happened and he was alone again. He couldn't even find it in himself to be more than tired. What was next? Was Rodney and the whole SGC a lie too? He sat in the corner and just let everything from the world go quiet, thinking and plotting on what to do next.

\--------

It wasn't Rodney's voice that drew him out of his contemplation. It was Jack O'Neill’s pissed off voice, just short of a growl that did it. 

"I'm going to kick someone's ass for this. He's mine and only I get to screw with what belongs to me. And McKay! You weren't supposed to leave him alone.”

“How is this my fault? He gets asked to go take a piss test by a lab tech. I was told to wait and he’d be right ‘over there’.” Rodney was clearly furious. “Forgive me for thinking he’d be okay on the other side of a door.”

O’Neill’s response was just as sharp. “Can it, Doctor. You knew this place wasn’t vetted. It was picked by the IOA for christssake.”

“Well maybe if you’d let me do something-“

“You already have something to do. Take care of Sheppard. That is all you are supposed to be doing. I’ll get Carter and a trained investigation team on finding out how they got their hands on an Asgard beam. It’s clear we have security problems. I need to find out where they are. We're going to the mountain where I know what the hell is going on and I don't give a crap about this holistic healing thing this place is supposed to do." 

John blinked and let his eyes focus in on the general who was dressed in OD green fatigues. "This place sucks, sir, but then almost all of them do."

Jack snorted. "Whatever, Sheppard. You signed on the dotted line eighteen years ago."

"Yes, sir. It was that or be conscripted." He shrugged. "At least the Army gave me a theoretical choice of MOS when I enlisted."

Jack's gaze focused in on him. "Right. Four years Army enlisted, special operations. Did your bachelor's concurrent to the first enlistment and then went mustang. That's where you picked up the Apache and Blackhawk training."

"Wet work." He kept his eyes on his commanding officer, ignoring everyone else in the room. "I was very, very good. So good that when I requested a green to blue transfer into the Air Force I had USSOCOM singing for joy."

"I'm surprised the Navy didn't make a grab for you."

He allowed himself a tiny smile. John totally got that this was not actually for Jack's benefit, but for the benefit of everyone listening that was reconsidering how much of a 'lost lamb' they'd thought John to be, instead of the feral, pissed off soldier he was. "I wasn't a good personality fit for a SEAL team. Besides, I got to fly a lot more in the Air Force."

"Right. So then a master's degree in there somewhere, a decade of flying and black ops and then you end up as a Combat Rescue Officer."

"Yes, sir. Evening out the scales of the universe, at least when they let me."

"And your answer for how you ended up in Antarctica?" Jack leaned one shoulder against the wall.

"I asked for and received a six month tour of duty out of a combat zone. Even sentinels need time to recharge and reset their brains. It made me crazy to think of the missions my unit was being sent on, but I knew I wasn't going to do them any good, sir. Not in the long run." He got to his feet carefully. He was far from one hundred percent physically or emotionally, and so gone past tired he wasn't sure what sleep was any more. "You and yours have one more chance at getting this group, whoever it is, under control and away from me."

"Or what?" Jack seemed faintly amused, even if he was clearly taking John seriously.

"I call for sanctuary and you'll never see me again. You'll be finding a lot of bodies though." He wasn't even remotely kidding. A sentinel declaring sanctuary meant that he was asking for help from every sentinel he knew, and those sentinels asked their contacts. It meant that whoever the enemy was now had a very large unnamed and unknowable group of well-trained warriors after them. It also meant John himself would go to a retreat center, hidden by the best technology the sentinels had available. That didn't mean as much now as it had a few hours ago, but John was betting it wouldn't take long for them to overcome or nullify most of the SGCs little toys.

"You'd walk away from this project?"

"The tribe comes first," he said angrily. "And they made it clear they were after more sentinels. They were way too good at what they did to me for me to be the first."

He'd heard rumors, of course. There were always rumors about a group that experimented on sentinels. A buddy would go missing for a few weeks and then show up again with nightmares. They'd also have receipts, photos and memories of a great surprise vacation somewhere. There were the ones that had some kind of accident: car, skiing or motorcycle or something that had taken them out of contact for a few weeks, unconscious in a coma with no ID for a hospital to name them, or so the story went. 

There was always a plausible story to cover the missing time. But there were the nightmares and the skin-shyness. They were twitchy afterward and hurting. John had watched and listened. He'd kept a tally in his head, and so had most of the sentinels he knew. It wasn't something they talked about, except in vague terms, far far away from anyone that could hear them.

The thing that seemed to work the best was to have close bonds with the people around them. Make sure that if they went missing someone would ask questions and raise a fuss. Unfortunately for him, John had been between duty stations and had a lot of stored up leave banked. He wouldn't be surprised to find that orders had been retroactively cut to put him on block leave, which was why no one had noticed. He would be very interested to see what his supposed return to duty was.

He made an educated guess that his rescue cut short his unwilling confinement by ten days. He hadn't had any real tests for five sleep cycles. His skin, despite what McKay and the doctor thought, had been clearing up and was getting better. The sores would be gone in another three or four days. Past SERE training told him that seven or eight days of chemical coercion, along with a lack of sleep would have easily convinced him the whole thing was a bad dream - along with inserting a vacation. His vacation preferences were well-known: flying small planes, maybe some skiing or surfing. Maybe he could get the SGC to do some hacking around to see what reservations had been created in his name - then again the evidence was probably already gone. Eight hours was plenty of time to make digital evidence disappear.

Jack was waiting for him to respond again. A patient commanding officer was an interesting novelty. John looked forward to seeing how that was going to play out as this continued. When John focused in on him, Jack spoke, "Understood, Colonel Sheppard. I hope it doesn't come to that."

"Me too, sir." He found himself meaning it. He wanted to work for this man. He didn't quite trust him yet, but General O'Neill promised not to be boring and John liked that.

"Come on. We need to find a ride out of here and maybe give your guide a jump-start. He hasn't said a word and that's out of character for him."

John smiled and tipped a glance at Rodney, who was biting his lips so hard they were turning white. "Actually I think he's gathering data and hopes if he stays quiet long enough we'll forget he's here."

"Unlikely, Sheppard, very unlikely."


End file.
